wrightwing wrote:There's a lot of circular reasoning going on. It's not a matter of what India wants. It's a matter of whether we'll allow it. India will have to move a lot further away from Russia, IMHO, before the F-35 would be on the table.

You could be right??? Yet, the US would love to bring India into the Western/NATO orbit and has been selling India some pretty high tech stuff in recent years. With the P-8 Poseidon coming to mind........Which, is "highly" classified.

In short if India would put up the $$$ and will agree to US conditions. I have little doubt a deal could be reached.

wrightwing wrote:There's a lot of circular reasoning going on. It's not a matter of what India wants. It's a matter of whether we'll allow it. India will have to move a lot further away from Russia, IMHO, before the F-35 would be on the table.

Foreign purchases of arms are a vote loser in many countries. Modi is being attacked by the opposition for the Rafale deal now. We’ll see what happens. I think any big deal for combat aircraft would have to involve major technology transfer.

wrightwing wrote:There's a lot of circular reasoning going on. It's not a matter of what India wants. It's a matter of whether we'll allow it. India will have to move a lot further away from Russia, IMHO, before the F-35 would be on the table.

Foreign purchases of arms are a vote loser in many countries. Modi is being attacked by the opposition for the Rafale deal now. We’ll see what happens. I think any big deal for combat aircraft would have to involve major technology transfer.

Odds are that India will most likely acquire and build the F-16. Which, would open the door for the F-35 further down the road. Nor, would I be surprised if it includes some type of package deal? Which, would include a mix of both.....

"The EA-18G Growler is a vital asset for the US Navy in the airborne electronic attack role, and its capabilities are set to increase via the Next-Generation Jammer initiative....

...[The Growler] still carries the 1970s-vintage AN/ALQ-99 tactical jamming pods. The advent of the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) was always planned as part of the incremental modernization of naval electronic attack. Raytheon is about to start integration work that will unite its new AN/ALQ-249 NGJ mid-band pod with the EA-18G, with initial operating capability aimed for 2022....

...Raytheon’s NGJ solution was selected by the US Navy in 2013 as the first step towards replacing the ALQ-99 family. It beat off competition from Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and ITT Exelis (now part of the Harris Corporation). Increment 1 of NGJ focuses on the mid-band jammer, whereas NGJ increment 2 will develop a low-band pod. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) issued a draft statement of objectives on June 29 for an Increment 2 preliminary demonstration contract, which will lead to a formal request for proposals later this year. Low-band typically includes early warning radars and voice communications frequencies. Increment 3 is for the high-band jammer, which will complete the replacement of the suite of ALQ-99 capabilities for the US Navy and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Growlers.

MID-BAND JAMMERCAPT Michael Orr, program manager for airborne electronic attack systems (PMA-234), said,... the biggest step-change in the ALQ-249 over the ALQ-99 as being, ‘the mechanical technology [of the old pod] compared to the digital AESA [active electronically scanned array] of the NGJ,’ which will allow the pod to jam more accurately and quickly.

The challenge for NGJ mid-band has been the need to produce an immense amount of power in a pod carried under the wings of a tactical fighter that will be required to make years of carrier landings. The combination of high-powered, agile beam-jamming techniques and cutting-edge solid-state electronics gives the navy an open systems architecture pod that can be upgraded and reconfigured as threats and requirements evolve.

The huge ram-air turbine in the ALQ-249 is fed via large air scoops on the side of the pod. Slocumb admits that weight ‘was a challenge’. ‘This is a very dense package,’ he says referring to the equipment inside the pod, which is also thought to generate huge amounts of heat. Indeed, heat concerns are believed to have undermined previous plans to fit a bespoke version of the Raytheon system in the F-35B weapons bay for the US Marine Corps to facilitate an electronic attack EA-35.

The navy completed Milestone B for mid-band, allowing NGJ to move into the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase. On April 14, 2016, the service awarded Raytheon a $1-billion sole source contract for EMD for Increment 1. Raytheon is delivering 15 EMD pods for mission systems testing and qualification, and 14 aeromechanical pods for airworthiness certification. The NGJ contract also covers designing and delivering simulators and hardware to government labs and support for flight-testing and system integration....

...FLIGHT TRIALSRaytheon completed initial flight trials of its Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) system in 2014. A series of trials culminated in a live flight on October 16 with the NGJ aboard a Gulfstream III testbed from Calspan.

Rick Yuse said, ‘This was the first time that we tested all the sub-systems together in an integrated, end-to-end [electronic warfare] system against real-world threats. The system included a high-gain, high-power active electronically scanned array [AESA], an all-digital, scalable, reprogrammable receiver/techniques generator, and a self-contained power generation system. We ran a series of tests and each time, the flight demonstration system automatically followed the threat’s every move.’"

Just so you know there are many stories about UPEs that may be solved by this development. I guess I can excerpt a bit from recent TAILHOOK 2018 video. May just do that - meanwhile.... Some Clowns need to know: USN before USAF....

Air Force, Navy team up to find root of hypoxia and other issues plaguing pilots12 Sep 2018 Stephen Losey

"The Air Force announced Wednesday it is joining forces with the Navy to find ways to stop the series of hypoxia and hypoxia-like episodes plaguing pilots. The Joint Physiological Episodes Action Team, or J-PEAT, is intended to foster collaboration between the two services, which until now have been separately trying to find the causes of, and solutions to, so-called unexplained physiological events, the Air Force said in a release. Air Force and Navy officials are already working together, officials said, and will share ideas and best practices to collaborate.

These unexplained events can include hypoxia, which occurs when someone has too little oxygen in his bloodstream, or hypocapnia and hypercapnia, when the bloodstream has either too little or too much carbon dioxide. Pilots who suffer from these conditions report experiencing shortness of breath and disorientation, which can lead to confusion, faintness or even loss of consciousness. The Air Force has also changed the name of its team looking into the problem from the Unexplained Physiological Events Integration Team to Air Force Physiological Episodes Action Team, or AF-PEAT…. [that'll do it - problem solved]

...The Navy’s already-existing website on physiological episodes [did not know this] will be turned into a joint site, and Air Force physiological episode information will be added to it. The website will also publish joint findings of the team...."

There is a story now about how the USAF T-6 PE Problem has been or will be fixed and meanwhile why more Shornets needed? Ongoing maintenance and repair is still an issue being fixed slowly. The Shornets have been run and run and run.

"A shortage of skilled workers and repair parts is causing backlogs in maintenance depots for Hornets and Growlers, creating headwinds in the Navy’s efforts to put more aircraft in the air, the Government Accountability Office found.

The Navy, which is chipping away at a readiness crisis among its fighters and electronic attack aircraft, is being hampered by a lack of skilled workers and capacity, specifically at depots on the West Coast at Whidbey Island, Washington and Lemoore, California. Furthermore some parts needed to repair the Hornets and Growlers were manufactured by suppliers who have gotten out of the business, significantly slowing the process and forcing the Navy to cannibalize parts on aircraft to offset the delays, the September report found....

...For now, the Navy is doing everything it can to fix the parts shortages with the workers it has in place at the depots, the GOA found. “The Navy’s ongoing and planned actions include locating another vendor source, reverse engineering, cannibalizing parts (i.e., removing serviceable parts from one aircraft and installing them in another aircraft), or waiting until the part is available,” the report found.

Making progressThe Navy is making progress in its fight to bring up more jets, which last year had just one in three of its fighters ready to deploy, an issue driven mostly by high operational demand in the fight with ISIS. Today, almost half of the Navy’s 546 Super Hornets are considered “mission capable,” a sign that the readiness investments made in the Mattis era are beginning to bear fruit....

...The Navy started 2018 with 241 fully mission capable aircraft, and that number is now at 270, he said. The Navy is also working with Boeing to repair the worst of its hard-worn jets. In May, the Defense Logistics Agency awarded a five-year, $427 million contract for Super Hornet parts and spares to begin working through a backlog of down jets.

Boeing also recently inducted of the first Super Hornet into a service life extension program that will eventually see Boeing working on 40 to 50 F/A-18s per year in its facilities in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Antonio, Texas. That program will fix Hornets in the worst condition.

The Navy is also adding new Super Hornets to the mix. The President’s 2019 budget request included 110 new Super Hornets planned across the five-year future-year defense plan."

"...Bullet’s [commander of Naval Air Forces, Vice Adm. DeWolfe Miller III – a career strike pilot known to fellow aviators as “Bullet”] plan calls for 341 Super Hornets to be ready to “fight tonight” at any given time. Despite the Navy staying “laser focused” on the Super Hornet fleet, however, the dismal numbers Shoemaker shared on Capitol Hill remain “essentially unchanged,” Naval Air Forces spokesman Flanders said.

That number stood at 280 recently before plummeting to 266, but officials remain bullish on Bullet’s blueprint. “You can’t watch this like the Dow Jones or you’ll drive yourself crazy looking at the numbers back and forth,” Naval Air Systems Command’s Peters said.

But those reforms better work because even Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis concedes he doesn’t know how long the Navy has to fix the readiness crisis before Congressional funding dries up."

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Deployments at 25 Year Low as Navy Struggles to Reset Force

THE PENTAGON – Aircraft carriers – the most visible tools of U.S. military power – are spending more time in maintenance and at home even as the Pentagon has declared it’s entered a new era of competition with China and Russia.

According to a USNI News analysis of more than 50 years of carrier air wing deployments over the last 15 months, the Navy has seen the lowest number of carrier strike groups underway since 1992, the year following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

"Pentagon leadership has set an aggressive timeline to improve the health of the Navy’s strike fighter force, according to a new directive from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis obtained by USNI News. The Navy’s fleet of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets will have to meet a minimum 80-percent mission capable rate by the end of Fiscal Year 2019, according to a Sept. 17 memo sent from Mattis to military service secretaries and other Defense Department civilian leaders.

“Our department faces budget constraints and shortfalls in aviation squadrons across the force. As a result, our aviation inventory and supporting infrastructure suffer from systemic underperformance, overcapitalization and unrealized capability,” read the memo. “We must focus on meeting our most critical priorities first. These include achieving a minimum of 80 percent mission capability rates for our FY 2019 Navy and Air Force F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 inventories — assets that form the backbone of our tactical air power — and reducing these platforms operating and maintenance costs every year, starting in FY 2019.”..."

"...Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $35.1 million, 20-month contract for the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) Low Band, part of the jamming pods that will be outfitted onto EA-18 Growler aircraft to replace the legacy ALQ-99 jammer. The Navy is splitting the upgrade into three pods to cover respective parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The order of development for the pods is “Mid-Band (Increment (Inc) 1), Low-Band (Inc 2), and the future High-Band (Inc 3),” which “was determined based on criticality of current and emergent threats,” a Navy spokesmen previously told C4ISRNET in response to written questions. “The NGJ full system capability is comprised of these three standalone programs ... each of which covers a different frequency band and addresses a variety of adversary systems.”

Northrop’s contract award is part of a demonstrator that will help inform the Navy of how to continue to mature the program for the low-band jammer. “Northrop Grumman will deliver a mature, low-risk and exceedingly capable solution for Next Generation Jammer Low Band that outpaces evolving threats and enables the Navy’s speed-to-fleet path,” said Thomas Jones, vice president and general manager, airborne C4ISR systems, Northrop Grumman. “Our NGJ-LB pod provides multimission capability for electromagnetic maneuver warfare. We stand ready to demonstrate advancements in this mission area and deliver ahead of schedule.”